


Release

by Aramley



Category: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-21 20:45:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16583861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: Arthur struggles with the demands of kingship. Bill lends a hand.





	Release

Arthur hadn’t given much thought to what being a king would be like. There hadn’t been time before, but when the Tower fell and the rubble had settled and the smoke from the pyres had dissipated and Arthur was last man standing – then it hit him. Because for him the whole thing had been about vengeance, and then duty, but Bedivere and Goosefat Bill and all their lot and, oh, the whole rest of England? They’d been looking for a king all those years and now they had Arthur. Arthur hadn’t spent those same years learning statecraft. Arthur had spent all those years knocking handsy johns into the sawdust and filling his coffers with protection bunts from the likes of Flat-Nosed Mike. That’s not what a king does. What does a king do?

Turns out that, lucky for Arthur, Bedivere and Goosefat Bill have all sorts of ideas about what a king does. Bedivere does a stronger line in telling him about it but Arthur grows used to finding Goosefat watching him, usually from some corner where he lurks with a sardonic expression that suggests he’s forming an opinion and looks forward to apprising Arthur of it in due course. 

Arthur often misses the brothel. 

When he feels particularly futile he likes to go down to the barracks and knock around some of the old Blackleg guards who stayed loyal to the crown, though they tend to go green around the edges and pull their punches and giving them a kicking is less satisfying than it was when they were trying to kill him back. Eventually Bedivere gives him a hard look and a short speech about inculcating loyalty in his troops and he lets them be. Now when he feels the mean streak of frustration rising in him he just takes himself off to some forgotten chamber in Camelot’s vast and drafty corridors and trains it out the way that George taught him to when he was an angry little kid too small yet to square up to the big boys: by hanging up sacks of sand and straw from a bracket in the ceiling (the original purpose of which he does his very best not to consider), and smashing the absolute fuck out of them.

This works, mostly, though the sacks don’t hit back so the business lacks the satisfaction of a proper fight. Arthur throws punches until it wrings the leashed violence out of his aching muscles the way he wrings out sweat from his shirt at the end of a session, and if it doesn’t quite do the trick, it’s close.

“It’s not enough, is it?”

Arthur looks up from his bent-over slump, panting after a hard session. Nobody ever disturbs him here – it’s supposed to be one of the perks of being a king, having people fuck off and leave you alone when you ask them to. But of course, there’s always someone who thinks they’re an exception to the rule and there he stands in the doorway to Arthur’s private sanctum: Goosefat Bill with that irritatingly familiar expression of half-amused calculation.

“You,” says Arthur, straightening up, feeling all his frustration flood back in. “Haven’t you got better things to be doing?”

“Haven’t you?” Bill counters. “Is this how a king conducts himself, do you think?”

“I’m _trying_ ,” Arthur spits, because he is, he’s trying so fucking hard and this is part of it and if Bill can’t see that -“Maybe if you crawled out of my arse for one fucking minute.”

Bill shrugs out of his cloak and saunters over, rolling up his shirt-sleeves as he comes.

“What are you doing?” says Arthur. He laughs, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “Are you – look, darling, maybe you’ve forgotten the time that I knocked your arse all around that cave, but if you really want another kicking then be my – “

Goosefat punches him in the mouth.

Arthur spits a metallic taste onto the ground. “Guest,” he finishes, and swings.

It’s a great fight – a real brawl. Goosefat fights first like a lord, and then like a street brawler, and at the last when Arthur has him mostly beaten he fights like the girls at the brothel: all teeth and nails and vicious intent. Arthur can play that game too, so he wrestles him down to the ground, grabs a handful of Goosefat’s hair and tugs his head back, exposing the line of his throat. Arthur already has him pinned by bodyweight - wrists pressed down to the floor’s rough covering of rushes over stone, knees tight either side of Goosefat’s thighs - so there’s absolutely nothing he can do to stop it when Arthur leans in and licks a long stripe up Goosefat’s throat.

“Fuck.” Bill hisses, through gritted teeth. “You little bastard.”

“Hey now,” says Arthur, grinning down into his face. “You went to some trouble to prove my lineage, as I recall.”

“I regret it,” Goosefat spits. “Most sincerely.”

“That’s a pity, I don’t think I left Vortigern in any condition to resume his duties. Oi,” Arthur says, riding out Goosefat’s sudden attempt to throw him, which is brave but stupid. Arthur’s bigger than him and heavier too, so maybe they’ve finally found a corner that Goosefat Bill can’t wriggle out of. “Yield.”

“Get off me,” Goosefat says, voice tight and breath shallow, straining against Arthur’s grip. Arthur shifts his weight down a little to counter the move, weighing Bill’s hips down with his own and – oh. Oh.

“Well, _Sir William_ ,” says Arthur, letting a slow smile grow, for if the opportunity to rile Goosefat Bill ever passes him by he might as well be dead. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“Get. The _fuck_. Off.”

Arthur grins right down into Bill’s red, sweating face. “Yield, then.”

Goosefat’s eyes are dark and furious on Arthur’s as he tries another desperate attempt to throw him, heels dragging against the ground without purchase. He looks so angry that for a second Arthur thinks that if he lets go Bill really will try and kill him, Born King or no, but Bill’s securely pinned and every struggle presses them closer together and maybe it’s the proximity – definitely the proximity, Arthur thinks – but he’s starting to get uncomfortably hard in turn. And Bill, because he’s a thorn in Arthur’s side and a sneaky bastard, finally sees the crack he thinks he can slip through. He stops struggling and goes suddenly pliant instead. His hips he cants up in a slow, filthy roll. 

“I yield, then,” he breathes against Arthur’s mouth. Submission as a challenge. Sneaky little fucker.

Arthur pauses to weigh the benefits of rolling away and never speaking of this again, which is probably what Goosefat wants him to do and almost certainly what he expects him to do. But Arthur can imagine the new edge in all Bill’s looks born from the smugness of knowing that he called Arthur’s bluff like this, and it’s already fucking unbearable.

So fuck it, Arthur thinks, and crushes their mouths together.

Bill makes a startled noise that’s irritatingly close to a laugh so Arthur swallows it, and then Bill starts properly kissing back: mouth open, pushing into it, as bossy as Arthur should have known he’d be. Bill’s tongue in his mouth gives him pause, though only for a moment. Arthur likes kissing, always has, and he never half-arses it even when it’s a stop on the way to something better, even though he’s throbbing where their bodies are pressed together and his hips are moving almost unconsciously in little constricted thrusts. Arthur can’t remember the last time he had a good roll; kings get offered it less than Arthur had imagined unless he’s going about that aspect of kingship in the wrong way too, which he probably is, because it’s been months and look at this: the best opportunity he’s had beside switching hands for variety is Goosefat fucking Bill.

Not that Bill’s any kind of slouch at this, Arthur gives him that. It’s all teeth and strength and push-and-shove, a hair’s breadth away from fighting except that now the intent isn’t to break free but just to break Arthur, apparently, and Arthur – well, if he doesn’t get something better than friction between two sets of breeches soon he might just.

He pulls back just far enough to look down at Bill’s red wet mouth and flushed face, dark eyes on him still. Always, always watching.

“If I let you go,” Arthur says, flexing his fingers against Bill’s wrists as a warning, “are you going to hit me again?”

Bill chuckles darkly and arches up to bite at Arthur’s jaw. “Only if you ask, my lord.”

“Fuck,” Arthur says, with feeling. He hates Goosefat, hates himself, hates how the scrape of Goosefat’s teeth there makes the pleasure stab low in his belly so sharp it almost brings tears to his eyes. He lets go of Goosefat’s right wrist and braces, but Bill just spits in his palm and sends it down to worm between their tight-pressed bodies, fumbling Arthur bare hip to belly with an urgency that rather belies all that languid teasing.

“Fuck,” Arthur says, as Bill’s long bow-calloused fingers close around him, and, “oh, fuck,” shifting his weight sideways and down on his elbow to give Bill more space to work with, his own free hand curling into a fist, and, “oh, _fuck_ ,” as Bill draws himself out alongside and begins to stroke them both together. 

“Such eloquence,” Bill says, though Arthur is gratified at least to hear the strain in his voice and the shortness of his breath. Arthur hides his face against the scratchy material at Bill’s shoulder and breathes in the hot sweat-dirt-wool stink of him while Bill’s hand moves and moves on him and he gasps through a haze of pleasure; either Bill is uncommonly talented or it really has been too fucking long, and neither option bears much scrutiny.

“I’m to do all the work then, am I?” Bill says, after this state of affairs has gone on for what seems like an interminable length of time. He turns his face and huffs hot laughter against Arthur’s cheek. “I should have expected it.”

Arthur lifts his head slightly and bites him for that, on the neck right over the place where Bill’s pulse is throbbing. Bill makes a strangled noise so Arthur does it again, harder, then puts his tongue to the same place to taste the rising heat.

“Stop that, it’ll show,” Bill says sharply, and Arthur laugh-groans open-mouthed against his neck at the thought. He can’t help himself: a purpling bruise peeking out above those neat gentleman’s collars, shaped like Arthur’s teeth. Bill’s hand does something complicated and cruelly good, and Arthur raises his head and finds Bill’s mouth, while at the same time he finally sends his own free hand down to join in the action. Alright so he’s not as practiced, but he’s a quick study and he shows willing and from the sound Bill makes he’s appreciative enough.

“If we had the stuff here, I’d fuck you,” Arthur breathes into Bill’s open mouth, harsh and low. “You’d like that, yeah? Roll you over and –“

Bill comes suddenly, taut and wordless, and the arch of his body, the tightening of his hand where it’s still on Arthur’s cock, the wet heat spreading between them – they’re all better than they should be, dangerously so.

For endless seconds Bill just pants and shakes while Arthur watches, stroking himself with increasing urgency. He’s so close. Finally Bill rouses himself, eyes opening and meeting Arthur’s, and there’s a wickedness in them that Arthur doesn’t generally associate with people who’ve just come their brains out. Bill pushes Arthur’s hand away from his cock and strokes him, and shoves his mouth close to Arthur’s ear and breathes into it, hot and low and filthy: “No, next time I’ll fuck you, hear me? It’s you who’ll like it, Arthur, I think you’ll love it. I’ll put you on your belly and you’ll beg, I tell you that you will, you’ll beg me to give it to you, and I’ll -”

If there’s more, Arthur doesn’t hear it. Somewhere between Bill’s words and Bill’s hand the place where Arthur’s flesh-and-blood body should be has turned into a concentrated, bone-rattling lightning strike of pleasure, extended beyond all reason. When he comes to he’s got a mouthful of Bill’s tunic and his jaw is aching with whatever noise he’s tried to keep down.

“Fucking hell,” he mumbles, spitting out cloth, as slurred as if he’s been drinking instead of fucking. “Should’ve offered you a job that night ‘stead of turning you in.”

Bill laughs. He wipes his soiled hand on Arthur’s bare hip – oi, Arthur thinks, vaguely, too boneless to do anything about it – and then almost tenderly he puts it on Arthur’s face, turning his head up as if for a kiss.

“You couldn’t afford me, sweetheart,” Bill says, but instead of a kiss he pats Arthur’s cheek. “Feel better now?”

Arthur rolls to the side and huffs up at the ceiling, and damn Bill for a bastard and Arthur for a fool but – he does.


End file.
